Just got back from a delightful walk looking at plants and birds in Teesdale. The lads went off on a nice 8 miler , could be more, from Bowlees to Cowgreen Reservoir , without a map because I felt that Miles should have memorized the main features of the terrain by now and the best way to test that out is to go walk! Fo and I went from Bowlees to High Force via a circle route and saw Linnets , Orchids , mountain Pansies and many other plants that I cannot remember the name of . A High spot was seeing two Lapwing fledglings very dozily trying to feed themselves about 10 meters from us and you could tell they were inexperienced because Lapwings would never usually come so close .Lovely ! The weather was very blustery and the sporadic showers had us getting behind a wall for biscuit break. The hay and buttercup meadows were transcendental . Like being in a fairy land and they will only get prettier as the summer goes on . Got back to the car and went off to wait for the lads at Cow Green and have another walk and on the way approaching the reservoir we saw a Redshank perched on the wall 10 feet away and because we were in the car it was not bothered at all. A couple more turned up and then a Curlew so something was going on behind the wall so we got out of the car and a Redshank was hiding in the grass and a Curlew landed near it and wandered over to it and kept shooing it off. We reckoned that Redshanks will eat the eggs of other birds because on the coast they quite happily winkle out the periwinkle flesh which is a much harder meal to get than an egg. Exciting stuff a sort of beak fight at the Widdy Bank corral! Onwards to the Reservoir car park and and soon as we got out it was so cold . Right, just what we need for slowly tramping around a peat bog to find various bog plants particularly the Sundew . Well, we went slowly up this bog which was super interesting because great chunks of it were falling away due to erosion but not a peep of a Sundew. So , we tramped back and I knew that there was no chance of a Sundew on similar terrain so I had the brainwave of looking by the river where the underlying peat had grass on it but it was very wet . Staring downwards for about 5 minutes suddenly I saw them , lots of them . They were much smaller than I thought about .5 of a centimeter across but all the little spikes were there to trap the insects to supply the plant with nutrients it can't get from the soil and the reddy rusty color . Total magic I've been wanting to see them for years and now I know where they are . We trundled back up to the car pretty cold and sat there for 10 minutes and up turned the lads looking happy and fresh. They had gone through a really heavy half hour rain shower but it was so windy that there trousers were dried off in no time . Good doggies . Well, an evening of Star Trek is coming up and the Man United Barcelona footer match and that will be great . A super day !